


Full Circle

by FenHarelMaGhilana (WhitethornWolf)



Series: Fortune Favour Me [25]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 06:11:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhitethornWolf/pseuds/FenHarelMaGhilana





	Full Circle

 

  
_Blessed are they who stand before_  
_The corrupt and the wicked and do not falter._  
_Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just._  
\- Benedictions 4:10

* * *

 

The feeling of cold sheets where there should have been warm hands was what woke Eilin from her restless doze.

The room came into focus around her. Unfamiliar furniture and half-opened saddlebags on the floor, a desk with a stack of papers and Howe’s portrait on the far wall. They’d put her in the arl’s  bedroom of all places, and Eilin reined in the petty urge to tear the painting to shreds. Instead she untangled herself and sat up, heedless of her dishevelled state, and tried to recall the night before.

She, the Warden recruits and what remained of the soldiers had kicked and rolled the darkspawn into a pile and burned them on the outskirts of the keep, so the stink was easier to bear. The fallen they arranged in a funeral pyre, and she remembered staring at the bodies twisting and blackening in the flames and wondering how she’d managed to fail so badly on the first night.

Logically she knew it wasn’t entirely her fault. She couldn’t have travelled any faster, not in that weather. The talking darkspawn had been a surprise too, and not the kind she liked. But if she hadn’t stayed so long at Highever, then maybe more would have lived. _If only_  was a dangerous thought to entertain, but she did nonetheless.

Filthy and exhausted, it had been almost midnight when the initial work finished, and the seneschal, Varel had tried to press her to proceed with the Joining.

"Not now," she’d said, and at his confusion she’d explained how the ritual was physically and mentally tasking.

Failure was bitter, and she’d already tasted it on the tip of her tongue. There was no need to add to it unnecessarily. An eight hour delay might mean the difference between three recruits and none, and she’d rather the delay than take the chance.

Varel didn’t understand, and she didn’t expect him to. But he seemed the sort of man who would rather trust a leader’s judgement, and she felt entitled to believe she’d earned that trust by deed alone at the very least.

Eilin wasted no time. She pulled on her Warden blues — dirt and all — and piled her hair on top of her head. Her clothes and books she tossed out of her saddlebags with abandon, until her fingers touched cold glass. Gingerly she drew the container out and held it up to the light.

Intact. And it was just as well, too — this was all she had to last for the next six months.

The saddlebags she left half unpacked, and the papers she left on the desk. Out of the entire stack, she knew of only one letter addressed to the First Warden, telling him of the deaths of his —  _her_  — Wardens.

She didn’t even know their names.

                                                

* * *

 

"Commander?"

She’d had the main hall cleared to Varel’s surprise and the guard captain’s concern. Neither of their reactions surprised or moved her. The Wardens’ secrets needed to be kept, whether or not they agreed with her methods.

Anders was the first to arrive, the sunlight in the doorway picking gold and red highlights in his hair.

"You’re just the man I want to see,” Eilin said, and beckoned him inside. “I didn’t get to thank you for helping me last night."

"No need to thank me," the mage said lightly. "Just keep the templars off my back, and I’ll be happy."

"I’ll do that," Eilin said. "And more."

                                                   

* * *

 

The Joining was hard; not that she’d expected it to be easy, but it was one thing to steel oneself against memories and another to experience it from the other side of the chalice.

Anders joked, and he needn’t have bothered. A year of travelling with pranksters gave Eilin enough insight to know when one would joke to cover fear. But she let him do it anyway, for when he forced the liquid down his throat that smile vanished like a sun behind a cloud.

Mhairi was the last and only victim, and she gasped her final breath on the floor as Anders and Oghren lay sprawled nearby.

It was cruel to reduce her to a statistic. Even so, two out of three was a better outcome than Eilin had expected. She held onto that thought, clinging to it tightly as she bent to check the other woman’s pulse.

By the time her new Wardens awoke she’d opened the doors to the main hall and arranged Mhairi’s funeral pyre outside, presided over by Varel and a few soldiers who’d known her before she joined.

Neither of her Wardens said anything when they stepped outside, blinking groggily, and saw the pyre.

"Grey Wardens pay a price to be what we are," Eilin said into the silence.. "Sometimes, we pay our price now instead of later."

She could see the question in Anders’ eyes, but Oghren knew, and for once he was silent.


End file.
